October 2015

Driving through Swaledale’s iconic hay meadows alongside the B6270 between Reeth and Keld you get a sense of the meadows great agricultural importance, providing farmers with food for their livestock during the winter months as well as their ecological importance.

Although measurable rain fell on ten days during the month, quantities were very small and temperatures above average. September therefore ended up as another desperately dry month, the duneland ground water-table being the lowest recorded since the drought of the mid -1990s.